


Reading Day

by hydrangeamaiden



Category: Keeper of the Lost Cities Series - Shannon Messenger
Genre: Depression, Elves, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Homesickness, Identity Issues, Introspection, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Propaganda, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29199249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrangeamaiden/pseuds/hydrangeamaiden
Summary: On a day where she doesn't have to do anything or go anywhere, Sophie realizes how much her mental health has deteriorated since coming to the Lost Cities. All of her hobbies and interests seem to have been left behind in the Forbidden Cities. Outside of Project Moonlark and all the complications that come with it, who is she?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The world-building in this series is going to give me a flare-up, so I'm taking matters into my own hands. Why in the WORLD do I like this series as much as I do?

At dawn, a heavy thunderstorm rolls over Havenfield. The usually clear sky turns dark gray with churning clouds, and by a quarter to seven, Grady and Edaline are rushing outside to move all the animals to their indoor enclosures. Sophie presses her forehead against the window, watching as fat drops of rain pelt the glass and turn the pastures below into a muddy soup.

A crash of thunder shakes the house. Out of reflex, Sophie flies back into her bed, diving beneath the covers. If it were just rain, she wouldn’t have minded. But why did it have to be _thunder_? She feels ridiculous, of course, cowering like a little kid from a storm. But she can’t help it. Every clap of thunder is like the roar of fire, waves dashing stone to bits, the rumble of force fields collapsing. Loud noises mean she needs to be ready to act.

And yet Sandor and Bo, standing guard just outside her bedroom, do not draw their weapons or rush to protect her. Seeing their calm eases the nausea building in her gut. Deep breaths. One, two, three. Hold for two. And exhale.

Sophie pads to the bathroom, feeling rather small and alone in her cavernous bedroom. It’s too early in the morning for anyone to hail her. Neither training nor school is scheduled for the day, which leaves her to do...what, exactly? Sophie realizes with some embarrassment that she only uses her bedroom for sleeping and studying, and it’s not even unique in that regard. She wouldn’t be surprised if she spent the night in every location in the Lost Cities at this point.

She goes through the motions of brushing her teeth and drawing her hair into a ponytail. Her reflection looks haggard, the result of many poor nights of sleep. The bright pink elixirs that Elwin has prescribed her are losing their kick. As a result, her saccharine dreams of sparkling animals are now interwoven with all the traumas she has been experienced over the past...how many years? Sophie doesn’t remember if she’s fourteen or fifteen or even seventeen at this point.

The whole stupid thing with the ‘Inception Date’ just makes it harder to calculate her age. _Elves_. Even after all this time, she has difficulty thinking of herself as one of them. At the same time, she no longer feels human. Sophie Foster, a freak no matter who she’s with. She lets out a heavy sigh and trudges to her closet to find something to wear. If she doesn’t get dressed now, she’ll spend the rest of the day in her pajamas, and that’ll make her feel even sloppier and worse than she already is.

She goes with a plain, cream-colored tunic that falls to her knees, puts on some sparkly gold socks (one of Della’s many gifts when she first came to the Lost Cities), and loses the energy for anything else. What does it matter? She’s not going outside anyway.

In her boredom, the wall of books beckons to her. At a glance, the only one she recognizes is the teal spine of her memory log, next to the scrapbook and diary she brought from the Forbidden Cities (shabby in comparison to the rest of the books!). It occurs to her then that she hasn’t picked up a single non-academic book since coming here. As a little kid, she read so voraciously that her teachers referred to her affectionately as ‘little Mathilda’. A couple of high school classmates once told her that she had a ‘dark academia’ aesthetic going on, a conversation that ended with her finishing _The Secret History_ in three days. Then she read _The Goldfinch_ in one week, but only because it was so depressing that she had to keep putting it down.

All of this she did on the sly, as her human parents would’ve greatly objected to such reading material. If only they know what kind of thoughts she had been subjected to at high school. Even middle school kids weren’t immune to filth.

Don’t look at her like that. It’s not her fault she could hear everyone’s thoughts.

Back to the books. Sophie picks a few volumes based on how interesting their titles sound, and gets comfortable in her throne-sized armchair (she remembers the La-Z-Boy recliner at her human parents’ house and feels a twinge in her chest). She wonders how elven literature differs from the books she devoured as a young child. In a fantasy world, what constitutes as fantasy?

The answer, as it turns out, is the far reaches of space. The first book she picked up was a space opera, with a crew of elves journeying to a newly-discovered star. They had some... _interesting_...ideas about surviving in space, but she can imagine the eye-rolling that would ensue if she pointed this out to any of her friends. As a rule, anything human was to be scoffed. She had eaten it up at first, but after discovering the truth behind Nightfall…

No, no. She’s trying to enjoy herself today. No thinking about elven war crimes and history revisionism.

Of course, that’s difficult when the next book—marketed as a mystery-adventure—she samples is very, _very_ obvious propaganda. The humans presented in the stories are caricatures of themselves, brutish and oblivious how they blunder about their filthy cities. Sophie’s stomach turns, and she puts the book aside. Then she thinks about Los Angeles. Her family had flown over it on the way back from an Oregon getaway, and the sky was hazy through the smog. But it’s not like the people who lived there _liked_ it that way.

Next book. This one would be right at home among the young adult romances that were so popular among her classmates. Because it takes place in the Lost Cities, portrayed as perfect and harmonious, the young couple doesn’t face any conflict. Yawn. Sophie puts it with the propaganda book, and returns to the shelf for something shorter.

The next one, according to the book jacket, is a dystopian novel about the intelligent species losing their cities, and being forced to survive among humans. Sophie flings the book over her shoulder.

Two hours later, Sophie has emptied half the shelves and sorted the books into two piles: books to read, and books to give away. So far, the latter pile looks like a small mountain. She’s tired and a little bit sweaty when Edaline knocks on the door frame. Sophie just about jumps out of her skin.

“I was wondering why you didn’t come downstairs.” Edaline shimmies past the bodyguards, carrying a plate of Savoroot. Sophie knows it’s just a gnomish vegetable, but it smells so much like her human mom’s eggs and sausage that she feels homesick.

Edaline sets the plate on Sophie’s desk, and takes a look at the books on the floor. She picks up one of the sappy, trite romance novels in the ‘discarded’ pile, and smiles fondly at it. “Trying to decide what to read, huh? I had fun picking these out with Della. Alden had a few recommendations, himself...”

Well, that explains the propaganda—though Edaline probably doesn’t see it as such, given the look on her face. Sophie shrugs and goes to her desk. “Just...doing some cleaning,” she answers lamely. She’s enough of a disappointment already, without revealing that she doesn’t care for most of these books. However…

Sophie gets an idea, and perks up. “There’s some stuff I need. Can I make a list and give it to you later?”

“Of course.” Edaline kisses the top of Sophie’s head, and makes to leave. “Make sure to bring the plate down when you’re done.”

“Okay.” Sophie can’t help but smile back at her mother. And so, with her mood lightened, she gets out a notebook and sets to work.


	2. Chapter 2

The school day seems to drag on. Sophie fidgets the whole time, barely able to pay attention. When the last class finally lets out, she bursts from her seat and races out the door. She’s one of many: for some reason, half the mentors in Foxfire decided to schedule exams within the same week, and many an hour has been spent going over reviews and study guides. It was intolerable, especially with the mountain of make-up work she still had to get done.

Sophie tuned out the chatter around her as she piled her things into her bag. Out of instinct, she checked her locker for a letter or something that could’ve been left behind by the Black Swan. Thankfully, those days of secret messages were over. She wouldn’t have agreed to meet up with them. Not today.

None of her friends offer to hang out, which she is thankful for. She just needs some time alone today. Forcing her best smile, she waves off her classmates, and leaves for home. Concentrating is difficult today, but she manages to light-leap back to Havenfield without incident.

Once she’s standing among the vast pastures, she allows the mask to slip. If Sandor and Flori notice, they don’t say anything. They’ve become accustomed to her silence and sighs. She’s glad they stopped asking. She’s honestly sick to death of constantly being fussed over, of never truly being alone, but she doesn’t trust herself to ask for some space without sounding like a jerk.

In the time it took for her to come up with her wish list, a lot of things happened. Bo is no longer stationed in Havenfield, and the baby alicorns are allowed to roam unsupervised. And that’s all she’s willing to acknowledge. Overwhelmed by the number of hails she was receiving, she has taken to leaving her Imparter turned off and left at home.

Sophie should be happy by the sight of the packages in her room, but she simply feels nothing. She puts on an expert performance of excitement as she thanks her adoptive parents, and promises that she’ll share her bounty with her later. Right now, she’s just exhausted and wants to change out of her uniform. That clears everyone out of the room.

When she’s finally, _finally_ alone, Sophie goes not to her closet but the packages on the bed. The paper is all pastels and floral patterns. Rather than tear it to shreds, like she would’ve done as a small child, she carefully rips the paper off and folds it all into neat squares. Her human family got into the habit of doing this at Christmas, so they could reuse it later.

It strikes her that for all the environmental work the elves do, she’s seen a _lot_ of her classmates complain about clothes being unwearable for things as minor as being out of season. The wanton material consumption kind of embarrasses her, to be honest, after growing up under to the mantra of _reduce, reuse, recycle_.

After a long bath, Sophie changes into a pair of soft, heather-gray joggers and an oatmeal-colored sweatshirt. Vertina scowls at her when she steps in front of the mirror, and Sophie immediately steps out of view. She doesn’t need to be judged in her own bathroom.

Looking down at herself, she catches a glimpse of the girl who could’ve been, had she stayed in the Forbidden Cities. Had the Neverseen never flushed her out, she would’ve been in college right now, commuting to and from her old home in San Diego. She would’ve been touring campuses and listening to her parents fret about the cost of tuition. It would’ve been stressful, but she wouldn’t have been fearing for her life. How depressing. She wants to go back in time and shake herself by the shoulders.

Sophie unpacks, and her room takes on an identity closer to her own. The books she discarded are replaced with all of her favorites from the human world, and stacked next to them are cases of her favorite video games and DVDs. There are more clothes than just the lounge wear she’s wearing: jeans and leggings, patterned socks, t-shirts, hoodies, tennis shoes that she’s terrified she won’t be able to wear after her next growth spurt. There’s a box full of all her old stuffed animals.

Most of these items she saved from storage in Mysterium, but others are new. Namely, the sleek laptop sitting at her desk. She’s surprised that her request for a personal computer was approved. It’d be too easy for her to slip up and let herself be known to the world she was erased from.

And yet…

She only asked Alden to erase her _immediate family’s_ memories of her. In the heat of the moment, she completely forgot about her teachers, classmates, and extended family. There’s also that newspaper article she was in. The one that led the elves to her location.

Before anything else, Sophie checks all of her accounts. Everything is still there and, thanks to her photographic memory, she has no trouble remembering her passwords. Her Discord is full of worried and panicked DMs from friends she had made in fandom servers. None of her social media profiles have been updated in a couple of years, and she pales at the thought of having to catch up on everything she missed.

Next, she braces herself and searches her name. The first result is from a missing children’s website. An article from her school website. Local news, Facebook posts from worried family members. It’s not just her—people are scratching their heads over what happened to the entire Foster family.

If there’s one thing humans are good at, it’s making information go viral. And the elves, with all their wisdom, didn’t even consider her online footprint.

Sophie’s heart pounds as she closes the lid of her laptop. She digs her fingers beneath her hair and picks at her scalp. The link she thought had been severed is still holding strong, and there are people who  _miss_ her. Online friends she completely forgot about, classmates who looked out for her in their own way, relatives she hadn’t spoken to in years and years.

“No one can know about this,” she whispers. The fallout would be immense. And, despite all the trouble she went through in the Forbidden Cities, she realizes she doesn’t _want_ to be forgotten. It was only because she didn’t want them all to think she was dead. At the time, she thought that option would be the more permanent way of erasing her, and yet…She was a child. Only twelve years old, thrust into a situation she had no control over. The elves wouldn’t have let one of their own just say ‘no thanks’ and walk right back to San Diego.

Sophie powers down the laptop and tucks it into her desk drawer, underneath a stack of notebooks. To the others, it’s just a trinket. A harmless toy. But to her, it holds as much power as the caches. No one wanted to hear the truth about Nightfall, but if possible…

She shakes her head. No! That’s enough recklessness. Still, she is the only one willing to go to such extremes. The Black Swan and the Council would’ve been content to sit on their hands forever if she hadn’t burnt the Neverseen’s warehouse. It’s not like the Lost Cities as a whole  _really_ trust her, and she has experience being exiled and on the run…

This seed plants itself in her mind, destined to bear dangerous fruit. Sophie, desperate and homesick, welcomes it with open arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You'd think more people than Sophie's immediate human family would know who she was, especially after that news article about her was published in the first book. Don't underestimate the human power of circulating information!


End file.
